The setting is Cheyenne, Wyoming, in the late eighteenth century. Pursuing a gang of gold-shipment robbers known as The Phantom Riders and being led by a reported sighting into a system of caverns, Marshall Jim Donner (Scott) discovers the futuristic UndergroundCity of Chimera. Captured by its Emperor Thorval (Lenard), Donner learns that Chimera plans to conquer the surface world with its advanced Technology, which includes mind control (a device powered by gold – hence the Phantom Riders' raids), Death Rays, Robots, and more. Scenes above ground were shot in black and white while scenes in Chimera are in colour. The Secret Empire aired as one of three serials shown weekly in the Television anthology series Cliffhangers (1979), but was cancelled before reaching its conclusion. [GSt]

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We passed a couple of major milestones on 1st August: the SFE is now over 4.5 million words, of which John Clute’s own contribution has now exceeded 2 million. (For comparison, the 1993 second edition was 1.3 million words, and … Continue reading →

We’ve reached a couple of milestones recently. The SFE gallery of book covers now has more than 10,000 images: this one seemed appropriate for the 10,000th. Our series of slideshows of thematically linked covers has continued to grow, and Darren Nash of … Continue reading →

We’ve been talking for a while about new features to add to the SFE, and another one has gone live today: the Gallery, which collects together covers for sf books and links them back to SFE entries. To quote from … Continue reading →